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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22425079">love, or something like it</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashpossum/pseuds/trashpossum'>trashpossum</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Horror, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Spoilers for MAG 159, The Lonely - Freeform, come back here, peter your husband is not a make-ahead freezer meal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 18:07:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,590</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22425079</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashpossum/pseuds/trashpossum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Silence succeeds. Elias watches it happen.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives Rare Pairs 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>love, or something like it</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trifoliate_undergrowth/gifts">Trifoliate_undergrowth</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hope you enjoy! a series of vignettes at the end of the world.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Elias always thought he’d be more prepared when the world ended.</p><p>That’s a bit of an understatement. Elias prides himself on his self-honesty; he rephrases. He had seen himself at the very center of it, speaking the words to bring the Eye to the world, basking in it's endless, unavoidable glow. But well-made plans have a nasty habit of being disrupted, and the only thing worse than failure is another's success. He Watches his enemies and allies, anyone capable of disruption: The People's Church of the Divine Host, led by a master even older than himself. Annabelle Cane, whose goals evade even his Knowledge. Gertrude Robinson, sweetly dangerous to all the wrong people. He even keeps an Eye on the Extinction, despite his own very healthy skepticism. It wasn’t <em> likely </em> that they could best him, any of them, but it never hurt to play the game.</p><p>And his husband, of course, both more and less predictable than the rest. Peter can always be reliably counted on to show up where he isn't wanted and skip any appointments he deems important (such as weddings, divorce hearings, divorce hearings about missed weddings). Whatever actions Peter takes in-between, however, remain frustratingly obscured. Not even Moorland House is as closed to him as the <em> Tundra. </em>But Elias knows his husband as well as he Knows anyone, these days. Peter is clever but reckless, capable but easily led. He lies fluidly and often, but only about things that don’t matter. Elias isn’t so confident as to think him harmless, but, ah. He’s known it since he said yes the first time, back when he thought it might stick. Peter is never going to be a real threat. </p><p>So Elias doesn't blame himself, exactly, for underestimating Peter's stupid ritual. Even when he hears about it, he hesitates. Something about an apartment building, Gertrude says, before she stops saying anything at all. It's ridiculous, like Peter is ridiculous.</p><p>After everything Gertrude has done, everything <em>he</em> has done--</p><p>It can't possibly be that easy. </p><p>It can't possibly work.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When the world ends, Elias allots sixty seconds to furious, impotent despair. He despises wasting time almost as much as showing weakness, but he knows all too well that refusing to acknowledge flaws is far worse than giving into them. And it feels good, just for that single minute, to mourn what might have been. Then he locks that part of his brain away sharply and rings Peter's mobile. </p><p>The call goes to voicemail, but that isn't anything to worry about. Peter loves a good show. It's one of the reasons they get on so well. Elias knows he'll come to gloat, knows it even if he doesn't Know it. And when he does so, Elias will swallow his pride and bend a knee, find a place of safety for the Eye and his Institute in this cold new world. He's done so hundreds of times for men far more odious than Peter. And if Elias remembers every slight, gets each back in turn? Well. A marriage without any tension would be terribly dull. Elias promises himself that he will settle the score when he's regained the upper hand. He lets the idea soothe his injured pride. </p><p>Gertrude, of course, has different plans. She goes immediately to work as though this is just another day at the office, another apocalypse to stave off, never mind that it's already happening. <em>How can I be sure?</em> she asks, when he presses her. <em>Do you really think </em>Peter Lukas<em> can end the world?</em> He's glad she doesn't try to compel him; he's not sure what his answer might be. </p><p>For two weeks, Elias dodges her questions, watching as London falls softly to the fog. He tells himself to be patient. The city collapses quickly, but they'd used to joke about that, hadn't they? How perfect London was for the pair of them, how Watched, how Lonely. Midway through the first week, he catches a pale man hovering outside the Institute, dark suit glittering with ice. It's a good sign, he tells himself, even as the man disappears before Elias can scrutinize him. It might have even been Nathaniel; the eyes are certainly cold enough. If the Lukas's are watching, the Institute has not been forgotten. He repeats it until he almost believes it.</p><p>But he isn't foolish enough to bury his head in the sand forever. When the third week turns and the cameras of London begin blinking off one by one, he stops calling Peter and enters the Archives himself. Gertrude quirks an eyebrow but says nothing, silently shifting to leave space for another pair of hands. He might have said that it was research for the Watcher's Crown, to make sure his own ritual couldn't be reversed, but there was never any sense in lying to Gertrude.</p><p>Peter's voicemail is full, anyway. </p><p>He doesn't worry, not truly, until the statements start to disappear. The newest ones vanish first. Those are the stories of the Lonely that have been feeding Gertrude and Elias both. Then it's empty folders, wiped tapes, boxes overflowing with blank pages. In the end, only the very oldest remain partially legible, testaments to Elias's vanity that now fill him with a nameless dread. Only the salutation remains.</p><p>
  <em>My dearest Jonah.</em>
</p><p>He burns them, furious and aching. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Things move very quickly after that. Without the statements to sustain her, Gertrude stops talking, stops trying. The trickle of visors to the institute dries up, misdirected or simply lost. Elias finds refuge in the corridors of Artefact Storage until they mysteriously empty. He gets lost, once. He's never gotten lost before. His employees begin to disappear, then he starts losing track of how many they were. His spreadsheets turn wrong, and somehow this irritates him most of all.</p><p>Eventually, he has to leave even Gertrude. He closes her office door with a last glimpse at her slumped form, sprawled over his battered desk in uncharacteristic disarray. He doesn't even bother to look for her assistants, just crawls back upstairs to his own office, his own battered desk. It's where Peter will look for him, when he comes.</p><p>He will come. Elias doesn't have the strength for anything else.</p><p>He barricades the door against the Lonely, keeps himself warm, than warm enough. He tracks time by the steady beat of his Archivist's heart, until he loses even her in the heavy fog. It's hard to keep hold of anything, then. It feels like it's been years, but he knows the Lonely, a little. Maybe it's been days. He keeps his phone close by.</p><p>When his vision blurs utterly and he can see out of only his two human eyes, he entertains himself by watching the Lonely slip into his office. He feels the cold seep into his bones with a muted sort of fascination. It's new, novel, an end he hasn't yet experienced, and the Beholding in him, muffled as it may be, is <em> hungry.</em></p><p>Elias is good at being patient. He's had a lot of practice. He waits.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It's so <em>cold</em>, is the thing.</p><p>He’s only been this cold once before, on board the <em> Tundra </em> many years ago. He’d been James Wright then, taller and heavier, but still the wind had sliced through him like shards of glass. Peter had left him to his own devices for several long, awful minutes as James wrestled with his pride. But Peter had come anyway and James had leaned against him almost helplessly. He'd been bigger than James, far warmer, and he'd held him like a precious thing. He dwarfs Elias now, small as he is. If Elias closes his eyes now-- he can't, he <em>can't</em>-- he might almost feel the sweet scratch of Peter's beard on his neck, hear the soft echo of his words. </p><p><em>I love you, </em>he'd said.</p><p>James laughed, then. He'd had a nice laugh, round and boisterous, and he'd been delighted to Know the true depth of Peter's indifference. Peter had leaned in to kiss him: harsh, passionless, sweetly desperate.</p><p>It doesn't seem quite so funny now. </p><p>Elias keeps replaying the soft moments in his head, few enough to count on two hands over a span of decades. And yet. He could do with Peter's frozen smile, his false whispers of assurance, the heavy weight of a large hand on his hip. He would be at Peter's side, if he'd won. Perhaps not right away, he can concede that, but. He would never have stopped Watching.</p><p>Three weeks is a long time to hide from yourself. Two hundred years is even longer. In his office at the end of the world, his self-delusions stare him in the face.</p><p>He doesn't miss Peter. You can't miss something you never had. But he'd loved him. Loves him still. The thought hurts, so he hisses it out loud, throat scratchy with disuse. He won't run from it now. He'd let Peter cultivate that love until it ran deep and true, Watched him plan not for a what but a <em> when </em>and still called for him when the knife hit him in the back. </p><p><em> Peter</em>, he says. He'd been religious as a child, lifetimes ago. He doesn't want to think of it now: quiet desperation, unanswered pleas to an absent, hateful god.</p><p><em>Peter, please</em>.</p><p>Finding his own god had been different, special. He's never prayed to the Beholding. Why should he? He knows what his god wants. He is what his god wants. But he begs now.</p><p>
  <em>Come home.</em>
</p><p>The silence is absolute. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*archives crew sound off!*</p><p>Sasha left to find her family and hasn’t come back. Tim is alone. He’s not handling it well. Jon is too stubborn to leave the Institute and Martin is too stubborn to leave him, so they’re barricaded in research. It’s annoying, but Martin has proven himself surprisingly resourceful. They’re coping OK. </p><p>(unless Peter catches sight of them, but he’s pretty distracted. I wouldn’t worry.)</p><p>:)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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